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164 :Power’s best beloved, the law of libel (A bright link in the legal chain) Expounded, settled, and made plain,
 * By your own charge, the juror’s Bible,

Has clipped the venomed tongue of slander, That dared to call you “Party’s gander, The leader of the geese who make
 * Our city’s parks and ponds their home,

And keep her liberties awake
 * By cackling, as their sires saved Rome.

Gander of Party’s pond, wherein Lizard, and toad, and terrapin, Your ale-house patriots, are seen,
 * In Faction’s feverish sunshine basking:”

And now, to rend this veil of lies, Word-woven by your enemies, And keep your sainted memory free From tarnish with posterity,
 * I take the liberty of asking

Permission, sir, to write your life, With all its scenes of calm and strife,
 * And all its turnings and its windings,

A poem, in a quarto volume— Verse, like the subject, blank and solemn,
 * With elegant appropriate bindings,

Of rat and mole skin the one half, The other a part fox, part calf. Your portrait, graven line for line, From that immortal bust in plaster,